Death poems
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Invocation
© Madison Julius Cawein
They who were fondly fain
To tell what mother pain
Of Nature makes the rain;
The Faerie Queene, Book I, Canto IV
© Edmund Spenser
To sinfull house of Pride, Duessa
guides the faithfull knight,
Where brothers death to wreak Sansjoy
doth chalenge him to fight.
Johannes Ewalds Last Poetic Sentiments Some Hours Prior To His Death
© Johannes Ewald
To arms, hero of Calvary!
Lift high your bright-red shield;
For sin and dread as you can see
By force would have me yield.
"Why should I, from this long and losing strife "
© Alfred Austin
Why should I, from this long and losing strife
When summoned to depart, halt half-afraid?
Mortals! Around Your Destined Heads
© William Cowper
Mortals! around your destined heads
Thick fly the shafts of death,
And lo! the savage spoiler spreads
A thousand toils beneath.
The Veil
© Victor Marie Hugo
THE SISTER
Why, brother, why upon me stare?
Why do your brows so fiercely lower?
Your eyes like funeral torches glare,
Jean De Breboeuf
© Virna Sheard
As Jean de Breboeuf told his rosary
At sundown in his cell, there came a call!--
Clear as a bell rung on a ship at sea,
Breaking the beauty of tranquillity--
Down from the heart of Heaven it seemed to fall:
Winter
© Czeslaw Milosz
The pungent smells of a California winter,
Grayness and rosiness, an almost transparent full moon.
I add logs to the fire, I drink and I ponder.
A Million Young Work Men
© Carl Sandburg
A million young workmen straight and strong lay stiff on the grass and roads,
And the million are now under soil and their rottening flesh will in the years feed roots of blood-red roses.
Doing Nothing
© Roderic Quinn
WITH the sorrow on me
Neighbours come and go
Think me vain and foolish
Nursing up my woe.
Within and Without: Part I: A Dramatic Poem
© George MacDonald
Robert.
Head in your hands as usual! You will fret
Your life out, sitting moping in the dark.
Come, it is supper-time.
The Outlaw
© Charles Kingsley
Oh, I wadna be a yeoman, mither, to follow my father's trade,
To bow my back in miry banks, at pleugh and hoe and spade.
Stinting wife, and bairns, and kye, to fat some courtier lord,-
Let them die o' rent wha like, mither, and I'll die by sword.
The Christening
© Caroline Norton
So let it be! and when the noble head
Of thy true-hearted father, babe beloved,
Now glossy dark, is silver-gray instead,
And thy young birth-day far away removed;
Still may'st thou be a comfort and a joy,--
Still welcome as this day, unconscious boy!
George and Sarah Green
© William Wordsworth
WHO weeps for strangers? Many wept
For George and Sarah Green;
Wept for that pair's unhappy fate,
Whose grave may here be seen.
The Death Of Admiral Blake
© Sir Henry Newbolt
Laden with spoil of the South, fulfilled with the glory of achievement,
And freshly crowned with never-dying fame,
Sweeping by shores where the names are the names of the victories of England,
Across the Bay the squadron homeward came.
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 45
© Alfred Tennyson
This use may lie in blood and breath
Which else were fruitless of their due,
Had man to learn himself anew
Beyond the second birth of Death.
I Took His Dreams
© Margaret Widdemer
I TOOK his dreams from him,
Boy-dreams of gold and red,
I gave him sorrows dim,
White grief, instead, . . .
And for a little space
Joy in my careless face.
